


homemade dynamite

by tooschoolforcool



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Team as Family, they made it home!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 23:26:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11519718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tooschoolforcool/pseuds/tooschoolforcool
Summary: Doug Eiffel, communications officer on board the USS Hephaestus, looked up to the sky. Renee Minkowski, commanding officer on board the USS Hephaestus, tangled her fingers in between Isabel Lovelace’s, former commanding officer. Hera, mothership program controlling the USS Hephaestus, held out her arms for balance and imagined what it would be like to fly.or/when you've forged a family of blood, what is there left to give?





	homemade dynamite

Renee Minkowski tried not to be sentimental, but damn did she miss sunlight.

It was a small thing, but strangely important. The glowing lights of Hera’s circuitry and the glaring flourescents didn’t even to attempt to mimic it- and it wasn’t just the light, it was the warmth. It was your face being bathed in sunrise, the look of tanned skin with shadows dancing over it, petting a cat stretched out by a window. 

There wasn’t as much warmth here. The closest Renee could find was wrapped up in Isabel’s body, shining through Doug’s smile, enveloped in Hera’s affectionate tones. It wasn’t the same as Earth’s, but not much was, this far away from it.

Besides, the air conditioner sometimes sounded like rain, and wasn’t that enough?

/  
Doug Eiffel talked at length about what he missed. Toothpaste? The tip of the iceberg.

He called Hera baby and sweetheart and tried not to let his heart tear apart when he thought about times he called Anne the same things. He called Minkowski friend and he ignored the fact he had none back home. He called Lovelace captain and prayed that any semblance of leadership would somehow save them from certain death. He called himself failure, useless, weak even when the rest of the crew no longer did. He knew the truth even if they would no longer admit it.

/  
Isabel Lovelace missed her old crew more than she missed anything from earth.

What good was a commanding officer that let her entire crew die before her and almost let it happen again? She was so terrified of calling someone by the wrong name and she almost left while Eiffel was dying and she had made so many, so many, so many mistakes and what if she had let Hera die and what if Minkowski got back to earth and went back to her husband and she was alone again? 

Doug and Hera were the closest to younger siblings she’d ever had. Renee was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. She couldn’t fail them. 

She guessed it wasn’t really her failing them if she wasn’t even really Isabel Lovelace.

/  
Hera missed nothing.

She had thought about it before. If she could, would she go back to before the Hephaestus?

She thought about it when Officer Eiffel affectionately trailed a hand along her optic receiver. She thought about it when Commander Minkowski offered her a tired smile and a ‘thanks as always, Hera’. She thought about it when Captain Lovelace blew her a kiss after she fixed a problem with the lighting in her quarters.

Hera preferred the now, thank you very much. Better glitching than trapped. Better loved than tolerated.

/  
They thought about these things often, on the way home. They had survived, they’d made it through, they’d given blood and circuits and tears and lives to make it home and now that they had landed back on earth and Hilbert was dead and Maxwell was dead and sometimes Lovelace thought that she should be too. Eiffel called them family now because those three women were all he had, their bonds carved into the world with a very, very sharp knife. Minkowski’s husband was dead under mysterious circumstances and Lovelace had no family and Eiffel’s hated him and Hera had never had a family but if she had to guess the way the people around her made her feel was as damn close to love as she was capable of feeling. 

Hera sometimes wondered if Alana Maxwell would have felt similarly, given time. Probably not. 

It was cloudy outside when they hit the ground. A sort of in-between rain feeling, early morning thick with the dew and absence of sunlight. Doug Eiffel was the first to step onto the ground, practically falling over as he did so, turning to hold out a hand to Renee Minkowski. “Watch your step there, Commander,” he grinned wider than she had ever seen before. “Meet earth.”

“We’ve met once before,” she responded dryly, taking the hand and immediately regretting it as he pulled her into a tight hug and then a spin and then a sort of dancing twirl as they both laughed. Isabel Lovelace took a confident step, sure of this if nothing else, and looked back into the ship. One more person remained.

AIs could feel. They could mourn and love and even die, and if they die during a solar flare they come back, and if aliens are unsure how to create a replica of a spaceship they sometimes decide ‘oh, fuck it’ and give a AI a 20 something body (apparently there are 5 AI years to one human year) that can feel and breathe and the whole shebang.

Hera took a few careful steps forward, jumping down onto the hard packed dirt.  
Doug Eiffel, communications officer on board the USS Hephaestus, looked up to the sky. Renee Minkowski, commanding officer on board the USS Hephaustus, tangled her fingers in between Isabel Lovelace’s, former commanding officer. Hera, mothership program controlling the USS Hephaestus, held out her arms for balance and imagined what it would be like to fly. 

“We made it,” Lovelace breathed, shivering slightly in a mixture of cold and awe.

“We made it.” Eiffel echoed, corner of his mouth tugging into a grin. Hera grabbed Minkowski’s other hand, swinging it between them. Lovelace reached out for Eiffel’s, and he clapped it in between both of his own. 

If there was nothing else, at least there was this.


End file.
